Product Description

Some men panic in the face of war, others embrace its horrific challenges. But none embraced war as ferociously or with as much cold calculation as William Tecumseh Sherman. It was Sherman who both articulated and practiced the relentless scorched-earth policy that broke the heart of the Confederacy. Sherman succeeded in large measure because, better than any other Union general, he fully grasped the essence of psychological warfare and could enact his own deep-rooted rage with ruthless clarity.

This biography is much broader than an analysis of Sherman's wartime genius, however. Michael Fellman seeks to illuminate the emotional as well as the intellectual, ideological, and occupational lives of this extraordinary, but at the same time representative, Victorian American.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1010469 in Books
• Published on: 1997-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 504 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This is a study of William T. Sherman as a human being rather than a soldier. Fellman, who teaches history at Simon Fraser Univ., in Canada, utilizes Sherman's extensive correspondence to depict a man driven by anger. A frustrating childhood and an unhappy marriage, a foundered career in the pre-Civil War army and a succession of business failures left Sherman a seething cauldron of hostility that he unleashed on the South during the war. Yet Sherman's will kept his emotions in check most of the time. His harrowing of the Confederacy was a means to end a war he wished to be followed by a peace of reconciliation?albeit at the expense of blacks, whom Sherman detested. Postwar fame modified his contentiousness, but only in old age did he mellow significantly. Sherman's life and career highlight the fact that relationships between aggression and achievement are complex and often symbiotic. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Those readers familiar with the life and career of William Tecumseh Sherman know he was rarely a happy person. When he was nine, Sherman's widowed, destitute mother "farmed" him out to be the ward of the prosperous Ewing family; Sherman never fully warmed to his foster father, and he nursed a sense of rejection and alienation all his life. Like his mentor, U. S. Grant, Sherman endured the shame of business failure as a civilian before the war, and he remained subject to periodic bouts of severe anxiety and depression. Although his marriage endured the strains of prolonged physical separations, Sherman's feelings toward his wife (who was also his foster sister) ranged from irrational resentment to an abject sense of inadequacy for failing to meet her emotional and sometimes financial needs. In tracing his subject's life, Fellman is moving over well-traveled ground. However, his probing into Sherman's deeper motivations and feelings makes for fascinating reading and speculation. If Fellman seems alternately entranced and repelled by Sherman's actions and personality traits, it seems a natural reaction to one of our most enigmatic and frustrating military figures. Jay Freeman

Review
"A penetrating study of one of the most engimatic and controversial figures in American history." -- Boston Globe

"As gripping and original a life story as has yet been produced on William T. Sherman. The definitive modern study of the Civil War's most feared fighter." -- Chicago Tribune

"Boldly argued and gracefully written." -- New York Times Book Review

Customer Reviews

Psychobiography at its best
I usually loathe any historical book which puts its subject on the couch, but this is a notable exception. Fellman infuses this book with his own spin on certain matters, but much of the interpretation is accurate! If you enjoy a "National Enquirer" approach to biography, then this is your bag, though a more intellectual, sobering and accurate analysis of events than a tabloid rag. Fellman delves deeply into Sherman's womanizing and the reasons behind it: Ellen, WTS's wife, was a passionless prig, obsessed with Catholicism and being the type of prim, straightlaced wife that Sherman would ultimately abhor. Can we blame him for repeatedly cheating on Ellen? Of course not.

Fellman is much weaker on the military end of the biography and his limitations show. There are numerous factual gaffes and the author is on safer ground when restricting himself to purely personal matters. This is hardly the definitive treatment of Sherman, try John Marszalek's biography (available on Amazon) for an exceptional and scholarly approach. But if you want a book focused primarily on the private life of Sherman, this nicely fits the bill

an enjoyable read left me wanting for more info
Some of the above reviews have merit, Fellman definitely puts Sherman on the couch, and, I also don't usually like this, as it takes some liberties that may not be entirely correct. However, it will take more than one source on Sherman to help the reader draw their own conclusions about the man. This said, I very much enjoyed reading Fellman's analysis. I did find it light militarily, however, I really wasn't looking for that kind of bio on Sherman. A history teacher, this was my first exposure to "Cumpy" the man, as opposed to military commander. I found myself wanting to research him more as a result of reading this book, as I feel it inspired me to learn more about him. There is an implication here that the book did not tell me everything I needed to know, but, as stated above, I found myself not really minding as I enjoyed Fellman's ease with words and the simplicity of the smooth flowing text. Therefore, I didn't critique it so much for being a bit on the lighter side of research work. I found that I would need to consult other sources for more information anyway. Having read Grant's bio and Foote's Civil War trilogy, I found this to be a good introduction to Sherman as an individual, especially after hearing Grant's praise of the man in his own work. I'm interested to read Sherman's own book after reading Citizen Sherman, can compare some of Fellman's analysis with Sherman's own. I very much enjoyed the section on Sherman's women, and the way that the text was oriented less chronologically than in the different departments of Sherman's life.

This is a bad book
The author seems to only have researched information supporting his questionable theories, shoddily covering the basics. Numerous mistakes on the most basic of information soured me immediately. He confuses Sherman's mother with Sherman's sister in the first few pages. Taking a sampling of letters and writings, the author takes huge leaps to broad conclusions. This is hardly the level of research one would hope to find in the biography of any subject. Read any of the other Sherman biographys before you pick up this one, if you are to pick it up at all.